Science: Deepwater Horizon vs. Long Island City

This discussion thread has great talent. We can't wait to check it for updates, from all of the rhymin' Simons.

Now for my latest entry (inspired by Tommy Tune who boorishly was on "Open House NYC" this morning):

In Long Island City a peony
Is planted to pretty the scenery
As nothing but swill
Lies beyond the windowsill
And lifeforms exist but as theory.

Now, granted boys, it's not as smart as Bikini Atoll, but I am giving myself extra credit for the very clever rhyme scheme.

you rock, steve

Aw shucks, lowery!

Extra credit well-deserved!

You guys are just too much!

I sure do wish LICC would post a poem or two!

I'm still waiting for your poem about Williamsburg, steve.
And Chelsea.

Such pressure, lowery. Such pressure.

I'm not convinced that other neighborhoods are nearly so poetic.

And LICcounty should indeed stop being such a shy wallflower, and get his poem on.

this thread is superb. outstanding work boys.

"You're the poetry man
you make things alright..." ("Poetry Man", Phoebe Snow )

apocalyptic moons
triple over the goons
who now have twelve fingers, 3 ears.
their plight is in peril
no corner is sterile
mutations that worsen with years...
"come see our new gym, or the pool,
take a swim, our swank will outweigh all your fears.."
but gray is the day,
and long lasts the night
when neon rats rumble so near..
manhattan just out of reach,
but at water taxi beach,
we'll forgive and forget over beer!
yet the sun sets in red,
unmasking the dread...
by hour, by day, and by year.

glamma the winner by leaps and bounds.

I'm not worthy!

Give that girl a ten-poem contract!!!

oh alan you are too kind.
my inspriation comes from all of you wonderful wordsmiths!

That is definitely an excellent poem, glamma - what puts it over the top is the reference to Water Taxi Beach. Two gold stars for that.

glamma - a prophetic poet for the 20-teens, reminiscent of the early Bob Dylan

No stevejhx, it's Water Taxi Beach + "On The Beach", which equals at least three gold stars plus a brownie point.

Nevil Shute meets trash chute

And at least glamma is a lady, and doesn't go for the cheap Water Taxi Beach + Sex On The Beach combination special.

ive been away and, while gone, a brilliance has accumulated here

feels like montparnasse in 1907

alan, steve; one of you is our gertrude stein

Did Gertrude write limericks, too?

you guys are absolutely hysterical. brilliance all around.

Allow me to repost from another Long Island City thread (this one started by LICC!) that died a premature death:

"Long Island City BECOMES More City-Like"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703748904575411220580792874.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

"Becomes." "Hmm," I said to myself. "This requires poetry."

To wit:

If more city-like means less grime
It won't be much fun to rhyme
But we're saved by Newtown Creek -
that pollution boutique
That equates Long Island City to slime.

HAHAHAHAHA!

bravo!

Thank you, thank you.

I may have to go out and buy myself a bouquet of flowers. I live on the 21st floor, it's a long toss up to the proscenium.

Who wants Real Estate when you can have Art? Best thread on the Board. Thanks Alan, Steve, Glamma, Wbottom, Falco, Lowery and all the other SE poets.

And don't forget LICcounty!

Thanks for your thanks.

People laughed at my MA in literature from Columbia.

Scoff now, ye malcontents!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_jerk

I never liked that Cali-punk sound.

River pollution, noise pollution, it's all the same.

But creek pollution? A whole nother thing.

Oh, bjw: just because you're talentless is no reason to deride others' fun!

Who's deriding? I'm poking fun at your poking fun. Don't tell me you're one of those who dishes but doesn't take? And who said I'm talentless? I wrote a beautiful haiku in this very thread. And my link was very apropos.

Yes, but "circle jerk"? Of course that is a term that could be applied to all poetry from Homer on down(and especially Homer - I never stopped yawning from high school) but really?!

We need MORE THAN HAIKUS! I want to see a Lament, or some such thing. Ode to Long Island City, in the style of Pablo Neruda.

Or something from Hallmark.

Or thoughtful road signs:

that condo / you bought / at market peak / oozes toxic seepage / from Newtown Creek / Burma-Shave

om shiva om!

bj and the sophomoric soporifics

lic funk

why one would reside / in LIC / will always remain / a mystery / Burma-Shave

Poor souls who live in the Houses
Of Queensbridge, their heads full of louses
Once a fine place
Of that there's no trace!
Just ruins, and runes, and slouches.

Warning: Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Hello

Since LICC doesn't want to contribute, I'll do it for him.

It's called "How do I love Long Island City?"
(With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My condo can reach, when feeling oh, how slight
Future equity is keeping pace.
I love thee for the sign still screaming "Pepsi"
Relocated, true, but historic nonetheless.
I love thee freely, as my fortune's spent;
I love thee purely, as I'm your only praise,
I love thee with the Duane Reade put to use
In my boredom, and with my broker's faith.
I love thee with my wealth I seemed to lose
with the closing costs - I love thee with the views,
the quick, packed subway rides! - and, if God choose,
Someday I shall love thee best when I've sold.

Bravo, bravo, bravo lowery!

Actually, even better than Browning's original, which I always thought to be somewhat sappy.

our next model - "The Raven"
please make your submissions soon, kids, and remember - "raven" appears in the name of one of LIC's neighborhoods, steve's fave

Awesome and awe-inspiring, lowery-for-LICcounty!!!

I too was thinking of adapting The Raven, but for now I'll stay within my intellectual limits and stick with sequential Burma-Shave billboards.

Is there a Kama Sutra - Long Island City Edition? Some special position to get f*cked in the ass by your broker?

Does streeteasy hate Long Island?

This thread's OP was deleted

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/22154-weekend-and-vacation-homes-on-long-island

Forevermore?

Is a Sinatra song coming next?

seventyfour88: No. That discussion was started by a broker. Alanhart and I pointed out the stoopid premise. It was a knockout. Broker, bye-bye.

So no brokers can start a discussion?

They can start one. They just can't keep it real.

Who can?

Can you can-can, can-can?

Truth, careful, this is the part where you and I talk to each other, and after about 5 posts, columbiacounty comes to the iron clad conclusion that you and I are the same person.

Oh, so what? Who cares, ya know what I mean?
I don't read the ignored comments. Not even remotely interested.

That's how trolls are sent back under the bridge.

I guess you are right, both jim_hones and columbiacounty are the only two current posters who are on auto ignore.

Don't read them. Ever.

No response to them = bye-bye trolls.

Any Keebler Elves around?

"No response to them = bye-bye trolls."

columbiacounty, any comments from you?
rufus, any comments from you?

Don't tempt them.

I want Keebler Elves. They got cookies.

Get off this thread. It's for science and poetry. Go elsewhere.

Nevermore.

One man's poetry is another man's treasure.

Shoutout to all you LIC brokers and salespersons! This one's titled for you!

************************************

Lie-awatha's Childhood

By the shores of Glitchy Gloomy,
By the stench of Newtown Creek,
Stood the wigwam called The View,
Sadsack spawn of Satan's spew.
Dank behind it rose the wastedump,
Rose the bleak and dreary projects,
Rose foreclosures with drones upon them,
Beat the murky, sunless water,
Beat, lackluster owner-geek.

One man's poetry is another man's freedom fighter.

oooo, alanhart, I LIKE it!

Alan.... Best today but not entire thread.

you hurt me with "lie-awatha"

AH, Honorable Mention for that one! "Itchy Gloomy" might have gotten you a full gold star!

lowery, alan - pure genius. both of your closing lines had me FLMAO!

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Long Island City, not to praise it;
The evil that slums do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their ruins,
So let it be with Long Island City... The noble stevejhx
Hath told you Long Island City was a dump:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Long Island City answered it ...
Here, under leave of stevejhx and the rest,
(For stevejhx is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Long Island City's funeral ...
It was hellish, waiting for the Number 7 train:
But stevejhx says it was worse;
And stevejhx is an honourable man….
He hath freed many captives from Long Island City,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Long Island City seem outrageous?
When that the poor have cried, Long Island City slept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
And stevejhx says it is a dump;
And stevejhx is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice lauded the Queensbridge Houses,
Which thrice did collapse in ruin: was this dumpy?
Yet stevejhx says it is a dump;
And, sure, stevejhx is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what stevejhx speaks,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him Long Island City, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for it?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Long Island City,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

It is a dump.

steve, upset his work was not included as "pure genius", has spoken from his soul

what more is there that can be said after this piece?

i know i am humbled to silence

stevejhx, verily.

as tears of laughter roll down my cheeks, i thank you stevejhx.
Favorite stanza:
"I thrice lauded the Queensbridge Houses,
Which thrice did collapse in ruin: was this dumpy?"
AHAHAHAHA!

i would like to take this opportunity to give a big-up to the ever-esteemed walt whitman.
drum roll, please.

On the beach at night alone,
The stench of death refuels its drone,
I would watch the bright stars shining, were my eyes not welled with such filmy haze…
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All tumors, grown, ungrown, large and small,
All distances to civilization, however wide,
All rationale to stay inside, eclipsed, evaporated in the hypnotic brown tide…
All souls, whether they dwell in prime locale, or in different worlds of murky foul,
All gaseous, watery, mineral processes, the fishes, be they live or black with rot,
All lives and deaths, men who prosper richly, and men who surely will not,
All of the past, present, future, glimpsed but ne're reflected in what sludge your
stagnant estuary has begot.
This vast similitude spans them, and always has swelled,
Even as forever shortens, depending where we've dwelled.

Glamma, a suggestion: "On Water Taxi beach at night alone...."

glamma! zounds!!!!!

and steve, I lent you my ears.....
positively delicious

clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap
encore!

oh man how could i have missed that! duh...

Well if I had a mulligan on mine, I'd change "Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill" to "Whose down payments did the general coffers fill."

But as a first try, in both cases, bravi!

To 52nd Street (an ode, heavily based on Keats' To Autumn):

Neighborhood of trysts and yellow fruitlessness
Lachrymose bottom-feed of manure, no fun
Conspiring with it how to load and distress
With soot the refuse-ridden streets - run!
To bend down with pneumonia even the trees,
And fill all fruit with rottenness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the T-cells
With a sour kernel; to send fleeing more,
And still more, loner renters from their lease,
Until they think dark days will never cease,
For night has o'er-brimm'd their living hells.

Who hath not seen thy lack of lofts but crappy stores?
Sometimes whoever seeks a broad may find
Thee sitting homeless on an ATM floor,
Thy hair lice-infested by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-peed furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of trannies, while thy crooks
Despair the red "sightseeing" bus and its blind followers:
And sometimes like a reaper thou dost sweep
Steady thy foul hand across, and look!
There, by the sewage-mess, and tetanus fish-hooks,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the joys of home? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast nothing but poo,-
While black clouds croon over the soft-dying day,
And bleed the trouble/pains with hazy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the Hudson river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the blight wind lives or dies;
And full-grown cancers loud bleat from anyone born;
None can sing; but now from its troubled pigeon-loft
The grey pest pisses and coughs;
And discerning bloggers twitter: avert your eyes.

bjw2103, your posts are otherwise great, but I think this is the kind of stuff SE was referring to in their mini-diatribe the other day. The LIC "joke" is more over than the condo boom in those parts.

Plus I think 52nd Street might be on the Sunnyside.

Just kidding, haha lol, that was a beautiful poem!

Not to mention glamma's "All"-Star verse!!!

Germany's version of Epcot Center: Long Island City in Berlin:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/world/europe/11berlin.html

alan, I'm one of those "if you can't beat 'em..." types I guess. And the English major in me started to feel compelled to participate. I should retitle my ode To West 52nd Street, though I thought the Hudson reference would be enough evidence. I especially enjoyed being able to re-adapt the word "twitter" from the original.

I quite naturally assumed that by "Hudson" you meant "East"

this thread must end lest i never again get any work done

bjw2103, yours made me burst out loud laughing! I too wondered if you meant 52nd Street in Sunnyside/Woodside, but I especially like the part about sleeping by an ATM

Really, bjw, you should have dedicated that to me, to make the allusions more understandable.

You'll get the dedication in the published version. Perhaps my editor will work in a more specific reference to Hell's Kitchen. Why should LIC have all the fun?

But you need a new thread!

bjw, i must say, from beginning to end, great.
just look how poetry brings out the diplomacy in us all.

Sans LICComment.

lic seems to get my creative juices flowing--it's a truly unique, special place

at the risk of being read by LICC, I'll post my Edgar Allan Poe trope on bjw's new thread - ducking in advance

lowery, I'd like that posted here as well, so we have a more cohesive body of literature in one place. Tomorrow's litcrit students will thank you.

We should move back to original poetry: send-ups are so Saturday Night Live.

Ten thousand rubes of LIC want legal justice today,
For they know that o'er bankrupt condo boards,
Fair LIC holds sway.
So then we'll conquer crooked developers' agents
And when the lawsuit ends, we'll sing aloud again:
Ten thousand rubes of LIC gained restitution today!

aw, steve......... I was just mulling over one last historic model to use - a famous speech known for its brevity .... must I scrap it?